Google is looking for engineers to staff its Midtown office, which is undergoing a years-long expansion plan.
The Silicon Valley giant plans to occupy five floors of the 1105 West Peachtree tower in the next year. Eventually, it will expand to 19 stories.
Danny Berlin, Google’s director of software engineering, says the company is building out its Atlanta office because of the city’s positioning as a hub for the Southeast, reputation for innovation and tech talent pool. The expansion is part of a nationwide plan to invest more than $7 billion in its offices and data centers and create at least 10,000 full-time roles in New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Atlanta by 2025.
Google has about 250 jobs open, mostly in engineering and some sales. Engineering roles will focus on development for corporate innovation, the internal developer platform and Google Play, Berlin said.
This year, Google invested $25 million in Georgia, Berlin said.
"Atlanta will expand beyond that over time,” said Berlin, who leads the Atlanta office. “I’m trying to grow it in a responsible way rather than becoming too big too fast.”
About a third of all U.S. Google users live in the Southeast, Berlin said, which similarly reflects the population distribution in the country. Google wants to increase its engineers in the region so its products reflect the needs of its customer base.
Google already hires a lot of tech talent from Atlanta, including in areas like machine learning, Berlin said, so it makes sense to set expansion goals in a city already teeming with techies.
Georgia Tech, a world-renowned research institution, and the Atlanta University Center, the nation’s largest consortium of historically Black colleges and universities, contribute to the city’s tech talent pool. Executives have repeatedly cited that talent as one of the city’s main attractions for new tech business.
The search engine giant is just one of the city’s new Big Tech tenants.
Microsoft is establishing a 90-acre campus on the Westside and making metro Atlanta its next U.S. data center region. Amazon says it plans to hire 3,800 people in the Atlanta area. Most open roles are for full-time engineering or technical operations jobs. Silicon Valley’s Airbnb also announced plans to make Atlanta its East Coast hub.
Berlin moved to Atlanta last year and is now focused on growing the office “in a way that works well with the community.” He pointed to Google's global initiatives, such as its commitment to HBCUs, digital training and nonprofits as examples of involvement.
Google already has 700 employees in Georgia, located mostly in the Midtown office and Douglas County data center. Google expanded to Atlanta about 20 years ago, first with a small sales office on 10th Street in Midtown.
"Google is definitely committed to Atlanta, and we’ll be committed for a very long time,” Berlin said.
